


Dagger and Cudgel

by Selkit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Character of Faith, Female-Centric, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/pseuds/Selkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days out from Kirkwall, Leliana has a question for Cassandra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dagger and Cudgel

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for _Dawn of the Seeker_ /Cassandra's backstory.

In the gathering dusk, it was difficult to tell which spot of red stood out brighter against the dying light: the smoldering campfire or Leliana’s hair. The bard sat several feet from the flames, back straight, legs tucked almost primly beneath her, a steaming bowl of the evening’s stew cradled between her palms. 

Cassandra kept the other woman in the corner of her eye as she approached, sword and shield discarded back at the entrance to her tent. Her muscles burned with the dull fire of a long day’s ride, but she ignored the ache, reaching forward to dunk her bowl in the pot simmering over the crackling logs. The stew’s heat seeped through the dish to bite at her gloveless fingers, making a muscle twitch in her jaw. She ignored that, too.

The other Hand of the Divine, however, was not so easy to dismiss. 

“May I ask you something, Cassandra?” Leliana said. She unfolded one leg, then the other, stretching them out in a languid motion designed to draw the wandering eye. Her lilting voice drifted across the campfire like the smoke. 

Cassandra stopped in mid-step, already half turned toward her tent and the promise of a quiet dinner alone. She looked over her shoulder, narrowed eyes lighting on the other woman’s face. 

Leliana stared right back, gaze steady over the rim of her bowl. Steam rose from its depths to curl around her face like a veil of the finest gauze, making her look both ethereal and mysterious. A calculated gesture, no doubt—yet through the vapor tendrils her eyes were clear, her expression solemn. 

_Not a frivolous question about shoes and gowns, then._ Cassandra stifled a sigh, not sure whether to be relieved at the prospect or to mourn her all-too-brief dreams of solitude. She turned back and lowered herself to the ground across from her counterpart, the fire flickering between them. “Very well,” she grunted.

Leliana squared her shoulders and tilted her head, studying, and Cassandra’s skin prickled at the sensation of being weighed and measured—a well-known feeling in her youth that had diminished in tandem with her rise through the Seekers’ ranks. She realized, suddenly, how little she had missed it.

“You have served the Chantry for a long time, have you not?” Leliana began. “Since you were little more than a girl.” She paused to take another spoonful from her bowl, small and neat, as though she were back at court sipping delicate broth instead of eating venison stew beside a dusty, hoof-beaten road. “Tell me, in all that time, have you ever…doubted?”

Cassandra felt her whole body tense with the force of her frown. “Doubted what? The Chantry?”

“The Chantry, your mission, your place in the world, perhaps even the Maker himself.” Leliana waved a hand, the firelight glinting off neat, even fingernails, but her eyes never left Cassandra’s face. “Any of it, or all of it.”

“A Seeker has no room for doubt.” The words left Cassandra’s mouth like knives from an assassin’s hand. “Doubting is for the weak, the foolish. Without decisiveness, without surety, we would be paralyzed and useless.” A sliver of unease crawled through her gut, and she quashed it ruthlessly, eyes hardening on Leliana. “Why are you asking me this?”

Leliana shrugged, crimson hair brushing her shoulders. “Perhaps I am simply curious.”

Cassandra had no more than narrowed her eyes before the other woman burst into giggles, her soup nearly sloshing out of her bowl. “Ah, there it is,” she declared, eyes lit more by mirth than by the fire. “That _‘bullshit’_ look I know so well.” She chortled to herself again before sobering, her gaze drifting to the fire. “Don’t worry, Cassandra. I am not judging you. In fact, I admire your steadfast nature. Perhaps, if I am honest with myself, I even envy it.”

She looked up again, and the laughter was gone from her eyes, replaced by something keener, sharper. “So you’ve truly never wavered in your faith, then? Never questioned the Maker’s plan?”

Memory clawed at the edges of Cassandra’s mind, blotting out the last few words. She grit her teeth and tried to chase it off, her grip tightening on the overheated bowl until her palms and fingertips screamed for mercy.

But physical pain was an inadequate distraction. It always had been. 

_She was eight years old again, mouth open in a soundless scream, watching the scythe neatly separate her brother’s head from his shoulders. Her eyes followed the dark shaggy blur as it rolled away, bouncing gently like a child’s ball, droplets like rubies staining the ground in its wake._

_She was eight years old, dropping to her knees and vomiting, allowing herself one last moment of childish weakness._

“Perhaps once,” she heard herself say. _A woman’s voice, not a child’s._ She blinked, and her brother’s crumpled corpse disappeared. “Long ago.”

Leliana said nothing, but Cassandra heard the unspoken invitation to continue. She ignored it, stabbing at a chunk of meat in her stew, silently cursing the hapless spoon and wishing it were her knife instead. Another moment passed, dark and weighty, before Leliana returned to her meal, stirring the broth with quiet strokes. In the distance, a pair of crickets struck up a contest to see which could make the most noise, as though to fill the void the two Hands had left. 

Finally Cassandra sighed.

“And you?” she asked, almost grudgingly, scraping the sides of her bowl to underscore the words. “You doubt our current course, is that what you are telling me?”

“No,” Leliana replied, firmly enough that Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “You were not wrong in what you said. Our next moves must not be rash, I think, but neither can we afford to wallow in uncertainty. There is far too much at stake for us to mire ourselves in doubt now.”

She paused, and her eyes slid to one side, the firelight turning them from blue to gold. “But there was a time,” she continued softly, “some years ago, when I began to question all I thought I knew about the Maker and his plan for me. It was a…crisis of conscience, you might say.” Her lips curved in a smile. “Fortunately a dear friend helped me through it, otherwise I would not be where I am today.”

 _Dear friend_ could mean only one person, especially when coupled with that faraway smile. Cassandra fought to keep from rolling her eyes. “Slaying an archdemon, preventing a civil war, _and_ restoring faith to wayward Chantry sisters? The Warden was quite the hero indeed, I see.”

Leliana’s smile stretched into a grin. “You are very perceptive.”

Cassandra snorted. “Or perhaps you aren’t quite as subtle as you think you are.”

“Indeed?” Leliana replied, but her tone was light, almost teasing. “And this from a woman whose idea of subtlety is to break down locked doors with her bare hands.” 

“Bullshit,” Cassandra retorted. “I don’t break down doors with my bare hands. I use my shield.”

“Very well, I stand corrected,” Leliana said with another chuckle, and Cassandra let her lips twist in bemusement. No matter how often she heard the other woman’s light, twittering laugh, the sound still bounced against her ears like a foreign tongue.

“…But that is why the Divine chose the two of us, I suppose,” Leliana was saying. “Sometimes she needs a gloved hand wielding a concealed dagger, and other times she needs a fist swinging a cudgel.”

She rose, stretching her arms behind her back and letting out a little sigh. “Alas, it grows late, and I am beginning to babble,” she said, and this time her laughter held a self-deprecating tinge. “I believe I’ll retire for the evening. But I meant what I said, Cassandra.”

“Which part?”

“About how I admire your tenacity. I only hope it will continue to serve you well in the dark days ahead.” Leliana dipped her head, an auburn blur in the disappearing light. “Good night, my friend.”

Her armor barely creaked as she turned and walked away, fading into the darkness. Cassandra watched her go, reaching up to futilely rub at the dull ache beginning to spread at her temples.

She almost wished the conversation had been about shoes, after all.


End file.
